When age wins out.

I do know how to sew at a very basic level. Ask me to add a sleeve and I'll break out in a sweat! At the Dragon we received several large donations from the San Jose Sewing Guild. We took in a few sewing machines which we would normally don't do. 

A customer purchase this one but returned it the next day and said it didn't work correctly. Being that it's very old and more a commercial type machine, there isn't any YouTube videos we could find on how to thread it. It also didn't come with any owner's manual. 

There were a few of us in the backroom who know how to thread a machine but this one was a specialty zig zag machine, pre serger era. We know it works but getting it to work correctly was a challenge. The customer who purchased it, if I had to guess wasn't a sewist or she's at least a beginner. I read up on these type of machines and found out it can sew FIVE layers of denim!

How we solved the problem was one of volunteers (she's in her 80's) said her mother had a machine like this and she remembered how to at least thread it. Still don't know how to set the stitch or what dial does what but we did get it to sew.